Two State Legislators Seek To Keep Laurel Hospital Open

Two local state legislators are proposing a measure that would effectively bar the closing of Laurel Regional Hospital without the authorization of the Prince George’s County Council.

Dimensions Healthcare Systems, the nonprofit group that operates the hospital, announced in July that it plans to downsize the facility into a walk-in medical center, offering only emergency services and outpatient surgery. Patient beds for overnight stays would be phased out, leading to layoffs for hundreds of hospital employees, WRC-TV Channel 4 reported.

The downsizing is scheduled to begin this weekend, when Laurel Regional Hospital closes down its maternity ward.

in a public hearing last month, Philip Nichols Jr., the chairman of the board of Dimensions Healthcare, told the County Council that the hospital has been losing $50,000 a day, a total of $108 million over the last 10 years, the Baltimore Sun reported.

But Dimensions Healthcare has drawn fire from local elected officials, including Laurel Mayor Craig Moe and members of the County Council. They say the company’s board of directors has been too secretive in determining the hospital’s future, and that closing it will deprive residents of northern Prince George’s County of the full-service medical center they need.

State Sen. Jim Rosapepe, D-College Park, and state Del. Joseline Pena-Melnyk, D-District 21, announced Wednesday that they will sponsor a bill to empower the County Council to determine whether Laurel Regional Hospital can close. The announcement came in a news release from 1199SEIU-United Healthcare Workers East, the union that represents workers at the hospital.

The bill would be tailored to cover Prince George’s, applying only to hospitals in the county that receive state and county funding, the news release states. It would prohibit “the closure or partial closure of those hospitals without prior approval of the Prince George’s County Council sitting as the Board of Health.”

The bill would require:

• any hospital to give the council 90 days’ notice before a closure;
• the council to hold a public hearing within five miles of the hospital no later than 30 days after receiving the hospital’s notice;
• the council to consider all oral and written testimony from the public hearing before making a decision.

Dimensions Healthcare Systems “is funded by taxpayer dollars and should not be allowed to close a critical facility without giving taxpayers an opportunity to weigh in,” Rosapepe said in the news release. “This bill will ensure that in the future, the hospital system is not allowed to overreach like this.”